"It is because the contemporary alternatives seem so one-sided and are not more evidently solutions to the problems which Thomas faced, and partly solved, that we return to him and to the tradition of theology and philosophy in which his Summa Theologiae appears: theology as the science of the first principle and this as the total knowledge of reality in its unity." -- Wayne J. Hankey, God in Himself (Oxford University Press, 1987), p.159.

Monday, April 05, 2010

1a 2ae q22 a3: Whether passion is in the sensitive appetite rather than in the intellectual appetite, which is called the will? Yes.

Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei ix, 5): "The holy angels feel no anger while they punish . . . no fellow-feeling with misery while they relieve the unhappy; and yet ordinary human speech is wont to ascribe to them also these passions by name, because, although they have none of our weakness, their acts bear a certain resemblance to ours."

Passion is properly to be found where there is corporeal transmutation. This corporeal transmutation is found in the act of the sensitive appetite, and is not only spiritual (as in the sensitive apprehension) but also natural.

Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 22), while describing the animal passions: "Passion is a movement of the sensitive appetite when we imagine good or evil. In other words, passion is a movement of the irrational soul, when we think of good or evil."